Suzanne Anker (b. 1946) is an American visual artist and theorist. Considered a pioneer in the field of Bio Art, her work is situated at the intersection of artistic practice and biological science. Through a concern for genetics, climate change, species extinction, and toxic degradation, Anker draws focus on the “necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank.’”
In this interview with artist Claire Pentecost, Anker details the category of Bio Art, its potential, and its limitations. She talks through the integration of living material as aspects of one’s art. In Anker’s work, this raises questions of both scientific and artistic integrity, visuality, scale, and language. Bio Art ultimately presents a means of navigating the nature-culture divide. For Anker, art does not function as a way to explain science, but as a possibility for artists to critique histories and draw attention to practices that have not been fully explored. Larger questions are generated from this concerning bio ethics, art education, and climate change.